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Employment Applications using “Apply with LinkedIn” Plugin

Jeremy Hessing-Lewis

September 29, 2011

LinkedIn now offers an “Apply with LinkedIn” plugin that can be embedded on your firm’s site. With a click of the mouse, an applicant can have their LinkedIn professional profile sent to the HR manager at the firm (or a recruiter). Because it integrates with LinkedIn, this tool also allows any of your connections at the firm to offer you a recommendation to accompany your profile. HR either receives the applications via email or through LinkedIn’s Application Tracking System. This process saves time for both the applicant and the person reviewing the applications.

A few notes on this plugin:

LinkedIn makes almost all of its money through recruiting. This is not a public service, but rather a tool for selling you more LinkedIn recruiting services. If you manage large numbers of applications, this plugin may lure you into subscribing for the Application Tracking System.

While people have been using public LinkedIn profiles as an online resume for some time, this explicit integration with the hiring process emphasizes the need to have an accurate, up to date profile targeting jobs for which you would consider applying.

I would like to see some small print noting that all applications will be received in confidence. Many applicants may already be employed and submitting an application via “one click” may be reason to hesitate.

As I suspected, this plugin is not so easy to implement for an HR professional. Despite representations that the code can be copied and pasted from the plugin generator, it actually requires some knowledge of Javascript, APIs, and HTML. For troubleshooting, have a look at the LinkedIn forum.

In summary, I can see this tool getting considerable take-up by professional services firms once some of the implementation issues have been sorted-out. As someone who has been both an applicant and a recipient of employment applications within the last 3 years, I’m happy to see these solutions appearing.